Tony gets access to the real investor strategies we need to know

It’s no secret that Tony Robbins has helped millions of people in the areas of personal development/motivation and he’s accumulated an impressive personal fortune in the process.

But he also puts his money and his efforts to good use too. In fact he’s feeding 50 million people on his own and partnering with others with a goal for 100 million.

The proceeds from his new book are going towards this cause.

Now he wants to educate us on how to manage our money.

I would encourage you to read/listen to Tony describe what’s in the book or just go buy it. It’s on offer in the US for just shipping and handling but here in Canada you’ll have to get it at the bookstore or kindle version.

I can’t wait to get mine. I have listened to interviews with Tony by Tim Ferris and another with Joe Polish and a group of folks who asked him questions. James Altucher has an interesting take on it as well.

Pinterest for business

I must admit – I love Pinterest. I even have a few boards myself and I love looking at other people’s boards too. Certainly for visual it’s fantastic, but as a social media platform it seemed to be kind of niche and maybe several pegs down in the order of where most businesses might want to concentrate their SM efforts.

There’s a great article over on Forbes by Jeff Bercovici and he makes a pretty good argument that It won’t be long before advertisers will be flocking to Pinterest. There’s some serious testing going on right now.

If FB is about the past, Twitter is about the present, it seems Pinterest is about the future, and what peoples aspirations are all about. That’s a very compelling concept for marketers.

By Reversing the Formula!

Don’t you just love being around and dealing with positive and happy people. Do you ever wonder their secret?

Shawn Achor – is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard.

He is also the CEO of Good Think Inc., a Cambridge-based consulting firm which researches positive outliers — people who are well above average — to understand where human potential, success and happiness intersects.

The social norm that we were led to believe was – work hard, be successful, and that will lead to happiness.

Shawn has shown that if happiness is on the other side of success you never get there because as you reach various milestones/bars you set, then you create new ones because you’re never satisfied.

What if you reverse the process to gain the happiness advantage? Want to see the kinds of things that will help you create happiness, help kick that dopamine in to create more energy, become more resilient, be more productive, active, intelligent and better at sales and getting results!!!

You bet your ass it is!

You know I really enjoyed the summer. But as they always do, it just went by awfully fast.

And here’s the thing…until last week I hadn’t had a real vacation.

Now before you start calling me a dumbass, it’s not like I didn’t take time off. I am the master of working very few Fridays and turning long weekends into extra-long ones.

And, if there’s a sunny day during the week and the weekend weather report looks iffy I could easily play golf, go boating or do both by cruising over to the Toronto Island and playing frisbee golf.

But last week I flew to Winnipeg, met up with a friend and we drove back through northern Ontario via the lakes and provincial parks. Lake Superior is fantastic. The largest freshwater lake and at it’s deepest 407 metres or 50 metres less than the CN tower.

And the waterfalls, canyons, mountains and unique little stops along the way were just a lot of fun.

I love the outdoors, water and mountains and RV camping is pretty cool. Getting away from TV, traffic, the news and just getting to be is really wonderful.

I love the rush of positive ions you get from the water crashing the falls.

Nature has an amzing way of grounding you.

How about you?

Have you gotten away recently. Been able to kind of shut it down. Quiet the mind. Stop checking your phone.

Not worrying about what you should be doing. Allowing yourself to just sit, think, not think, read, not read, journal, not journal.

Just flow…enjoy the days experience and then, move on to the next day.

A Clothing Company Discourages Customers from Buying it’s Stuff – and Business is Booming!

Patagonia is a great brand and it’s philosophy is refreshing. It shuns the current trend of fast fashion embraced by some consumers and the likes of H&M and Forever 21.

“A generation of consumers has grown up wearing what is often referred to as ‘fast fashion’ — trendy, inexpensive versions of runway looks that shoppers wear for one season, or one occasion, and often toss,” according to the WSJ. “Now, many of these shoppers are graduating to a philosophy of quality not quantity.”

“We design and sell things made to last and be useful. But we ask our customers not to buy from us what you don’t need or can’t really use. Everything we make–everything anyone makes–costs the planet more than it gives back,” the company told Fast Company.

The “socially and environmentally conscious practices” have helped profits triple since 2008. This strategy appears to cater to it’s outdoor active tribe that not only loves their product but their operating principles.

Five Visual Design Trends to Inspire You

The folks over at marketing profs have some interesting thoughts on design trends.

Amazon just dropped the price of it’s smartphone to .99 cents

Instead of $199.00 the Firefly phone is now available at .99 with a 2 year contract. The results of the initial launch were disappointing. So Jeff Bezos in his usual fashion said we just need to get this phone in peoples hands ( at a huge loss/investment ) and then we’ll make it up in sooooo many ways.

Here’s a list of what is on offer:

Dynamic Perspective, Firefly, world-class customer support with Mayday, free unlimited cloud storage for photos, 32GB of storage—and, for a limited time, customers get 12 months of Prime membership with Fire phone, which includes unlimited streaming of tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes from Prime Instant Video, access to over a million songs to download or stream from Prime Music, over 500,000 books to borrow from Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and free two-day shipping on tens of millions of items.

You must admit watching Amazon, Google, Samsung, Apple and Facebook battle it out in mobile is really interesting.

Speaking of Facebook – Video is booming

Facebook was the primary vehicle for spreading the recent ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, most of which was the sharing of folks vidoe’s of them dousing themselves and then challenging their friends.

Beyonce recently posted vids on both FB and Youtube and the share results via FB totally dwarfed youtube. Now youtube is still king but FB is coming on strong, just as they are challenging Google on advertising.

Brendon Burchard – has been around for a number of years but he’s just been killing it the last 2 years. He’s published a number of NY Times best sellers, he’s the ultimate online marketer who’s launched plenty of multi-million dollar info-product launches, and his events rival those of the great Tony Robbins.

He has a rare gift of being completely positive, upbeat, motivational and his delivery is fantastic. So he’s great for personal development. But he’s also a master marketer…he’s spending big big bucks on Facebook these days…in fact he says it’s so good he says you should be spending 1000.00 a day if you have a great product or service.

Here’s some advice he has on how incredibly successful people think…it’s 6 1/2 minutes

Brendon uses video in an amazing way. He teaches from his offices and uses kind of an old fashioned style that I personally still like, which is a whiteboard. He’s got a variety of programs and while I’ve never invested in any of his programs, the notes I have from his free trainings are tremendous. Better than other peoples paid trainings.

You can check him out at his website. This will also lead you to his youtube channel, his books, his various programs, his podcast (very recent). I use a one page productivity planner I downloaded from his high performance academy…you should check it out.

Certainly the ALS ice bucket challenge has been one of the most viral campaigns to happen in some time and the power of social media has again shown it’s strength. But there are a number of factors that were in play here and for marketers it’s worth a quick review.

Here is a post by Darling Jimeniz of leadingresults.com

If you are familiar with Tony Robins, you have also probably heard his theory on the 6 human needs. According to Robbins all of our actions are motivated by the following 6 human needs: Certainty, Uncertainty/Variety/Excitement, Significance, Love/Connection, Growth, and Contribution.

The ICE bucket challenge managed in one swoop to fulfill 4 of these needs that we are constantly seeking to fulfill.

So we all know that Netflix has become hugely popular. You are able to stream from pretty much all your devices and if you have chromcast and other tools well you can see it on your TV too. Pretty good deal for 9.99 month…and people have been cancelling the very expensive cable packages that you have to buy in bundles even thou you’ll never watch half the channels.

For example I like the golf channel so I need a package for that. And then there’s a few shows like Dexter, True Detective and Ray Donovan…so I need the VIP channel for that.

Well two of the big 3 cable/telecoms (Rogers and Shaw) here in Canada just announced they are coming out with Shomi which is a Netflix knock-off. As much as I dislike these behemoths and their monopolies, strategies and poor customer service; I must give them credit for not standing pat. If people want movies on their tablet then lets give it to them or someone else will and has!

Are there things on the horizon, threats to your business you should be thinking about?

Hyperlapse from Instagram

I haven’t personally started using Instagram yet but many have. My 12 year old nephew and his friends are all over it and of course teens and the whole entertainment business is as well.

I also thought it was more about using for pictures but video is the big deal ( like it is everywhere now ). So instagram has now developed an app for IOS devices (Apple) that steadies the video for you especially for action and moving shots.

I am always amazed when I come across some new ( and especially free ) tools that can help me in my business. Maybe these will be new for you as well.

I have google apps for business and love how I can co-ordinate all my emails and calenders across all my devices. But I haven’t really explored google docs.

There are tons of forms, templates (like for invoicing) and I just found out you can have multiple calendars…so if you wanted to set up say a content calendar that you could share with someone but you didn’t want them to see your personal schedule calendar, well that’s easy. Check it out here

Buzzsumo

Now this is a cool tool. You just type in a topic or keyword on some content or if you are looking for top videos or infographics on a subject or market…boom…you get the listings with highest views, shares etc. Try it out and bookmark it.

Pixabay

Finding images that you can use for blog posts…to make picture quotes or for any illustrations is always a challenge. Sure there’s lots of sites where you can buy images. Again free is good. For good free images check out Pixabay.

I’ve posted this Gary V slideshare presentation here because I am a fan and while I saw lots of interviews with him leading up to the recent launch of his new book, I hadn’t seen this deck.

I actually have the kindle version of the book and bought it months ago but admit I haven’t got to it yet. So many already on the go in various stages and I admit that hard copy books I buy still seem to get priority over digital. And, I’m addicted to real high-lighters! I need to take some summer vacation to get more reading done. But I digress.

If you are a marketer, business owner then you really understand the shift that’s taking place in terms of the battle for attention with your clients and prospective customers, keep reading and find some great info on slideshare. Did you know since 2008 our attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. A goldfish is at 9 🙂

I think it may be one of the most under-rated and under-utilized tools on the web. But companies and people are catching on.

Michael Brenner who is VP Marketing and Content Strategy for SAP has posted his top 12 slideshare presentations…last year he had a top 25. Maybe 12 more are coming in the back half of the year. Hell, we should all create our own top lists!

I like these presentations for a number of reasons…you get access to great info and ideas, because its not audio or video it’s easy to make note of stats etc, and you see how others assemble these powerpoint/keynote type decks and how they use visuals and images to tell their story.

Here’s some interesting stats I gleaned from some of the slides:

90% of all internet traffic by 2017 with be video

emotional messages are 2x more effective than promotional

83% of human learning is visual

articles that contain images get 94% more views

73% of people surveyed wouldn’t care if the brands they used disappeared from their life

B2B companies with blogs generate 67% more leads/month than those without blogs

Facebook :There’s been a lot of attention around Facebook marketing/advertising lately. There’s been some great online courses launched by Amy Porterfield and Andy Jenkins/Mike Filsaime. Their training leading up to their product launches was good.

Of course their are lots of other resources out there. I like Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner and on a recent podcast he interviewed Rick Mulready who’s another FB expert. You can read about it and/or listen to the podcast for some great insights…I liked to learn more about how re-targeting works. Check it out here.

PPC University : If you have been wondering how Google ad words and PPC works there is some great free training at PPC University. This is brought to you by the experts at wordstream. It is basic 101 – 102 and advanced training. Good stuff to know even if you are hiring out to conduct a campaign. See it right here.

Content Marketing; Over at Oktopost, they have 10 examples of great content marketing. Now of course most of these folks have big budgets but it’s interesting to see what they are doing. Small business can also create fun and engaging content. Your iphone will shoot good video, you can get some fun animation done through Fiverr and other freelancers. For example if you wondered what Sharpie would do to engage people on their blog take a look. And the Dollar Shave spots are fantastic. And an animation company took advantage of the world cup to show off what they can do. You can see the content examples here.